The original Big Bird

Pterosaurs, the world’s first flying vertebrates, went extinct 66 million years ago, and it’s probably a good thing, too, because mankind would have looked like easy prey.

The largest known specimen of the pterosaur — technical name Quetzalcoatlus — was a bird with a wingspan of 33 feet. It weighed more than 150 pounds and, when not flying, could fold up its wings like a carrier-based aircraft and walk about on all fours.

The largest of today’s birds, albatrosses and condors, have wingspans of 10 feet.

The quadrupedal pterosaur evolved in a curious way. What became a foot was originally a hand of sorts with fingers, one of them exceptionally long, which eventually turned into a wing. The new appendage was midwing; it enabled the pterosaur to stand comfortably on all fours and, importantly, gave it superior launching power to get airborne.

The giant pterosaurs lived in grasslands because, given their size, they were ill-suited to flying through forests or perching on limbs. And, from the location of fossils, the huge birds preferred grasslands near seaside cliffs for ease of launching.

The pterosaur was hardly an anachronism. Like modern birds, the pterosaur had hollow bones, thus saving on weight, but its wings were more elastic and thus better able to change shape to increase lift. And it may not be gone from the animal kingdom for good.

In what surely isn’t good news to the airline industry, Mark Norrell, paleontology chairman of the American Museum of Natural History, told The Washington Post: “Large birds evolved before, and they could evolve again.”

So it wouldn’t hurt to keep an occasional eye on the bird feeder, just in case the squirrels and, indeed, the feeder itself disappear.